Monday, September 26, 2011

If you know who Red John is, you know I’m going to talk about the TV mystery show, THE MENTALIST. If you’ve not seen the season opener, spoilers abound. Read at your own risk. (You can watch the season premier for free on the CBS website.)

If you don’t watch THE MENTALIST, I’ll try to give you enough information so you can connect what I’m saying to your own writing.

The Primary Backstory to THE MENTALIST.

Patrick Jane, a pretend-psychic/conman with an extraordinary ability to read people’s hidden physical communication and personalities, makes the mistake of saying publicly that he will help the police catch Red John, a brilliant serial killer who vivisects his female victims.

Patrick returns home to find his beloved wife and young daughter murdered by Red John. To save his teetering sanity as well as seek revenge, he joins a special unit of the California State Police which handles the most difficult murder cases. He swears he will kill Red John when he finds him.

His success rate at solving murders is phenomenal, but his fondness for using others and playing cruel games with people’s emotions makes him unlikable and a thorn in the side of any powerful person he comes in contact with.

Red John plays his own games with Patrick by using other killers to taunt him and to make him fear for the safety of anyone he cares about.

The Big Twist

Last season involved a whole season story arc about a murder inside of the police station of one of Red John’s minions who has been captured and who would have given Patrick and the police clues to Red John’s identity. They must discover who the murderer/mole within the department is.

In the final episode, Patrick lures out the mole and Red John. Patrick and his nemesis, a bland-looking and successful businessman, come face to face in a mall food court where his nemesis admits who he is and tells Patrick details only he would know about the brutal murder of Patrick’s family. As Red John who is armed turns to leave, Patrick uses his hidden gun to kill him, then sits down and waits for the authorities to arrest him.

In the season premier, Patrick is in jail and waiting for his trial. The state hierarchy is so busy protecting their rears that they have done nothing to prove Patrick’s story to be true, and his victim doesn’t appear to be a cold-blooded serial killer. Patrick’s friends on his police team go behind their superiors’ backs and with Jane’s help prove that the dead man and his wife kidnap and kill women in a hidden room in their basement.

The jury finds him innocent because of his belief that he had a right to stop the man who had killed his family and planned to keep killing.

Patrick then tells his partner Lisbon that the man wasn’t Red John, after all.

Writer Obligations

Quite a surprise twist, wasn’t it?

But did it work?

Yes.

Was it fair?

Absolutely not.

If a writer is fair to his reader, the clues to the twist have been planted all along, and when the reader looks back, he can see plainly what he’s ignored as unimportant or misread.

Think about Snape in the Harry Potter novels. The clues to his big surprise are planted through the novels. Or Bruce Willis’ character in THE SIXTH SENSE. His big twist is laid out long before the big tah-dah of the revelation of what he is.

In THE MENTALIST, the surprise twist of not-Red John had no clues that pointed to that fact up to murder in the mall. All the clues said that the man was Red John.

The writers and runners of the show had said more than once before and after the airing of the show that it was Red John who died which is a second betrayal of fans.

The season premier tossed out a few clues to not-Red John, but they were too little and too late in regaining my trust in their honest storytelling.

Will I continue watching after being betrayed so completely? I’m not really sure.

Would I ever write a story that was so unfair or read the author again if they cheated like that? Absolutely not.

Now, I toss this out to you. Do you think the writers played fair and did the big twist work?

Monday, September 19, 2011

A work of fiction should be a series of interlocking questions. Think of these questions as links in a chain that pulls the reader through each scene and through the novel.

The questions within the book should be ongoing. Before you answer one question the reader has, you should have several more set up so the reader doesn't say "oh, now I understand" and put down the book never to finish it.

The questions can be action questions-- Will the heroine rescue the baby before it crawls into the well? Will the hero kiss her now?

The questions can be character questions-- What happened to Mary that makes her so nervous around men? Why does Jim hate Bill?

The questions can be setting questions-- What is beyond the next bend in the road? Where is the dragon hiding? Why does the lab have smoke in it?

The questions can be plot questions-- Will Tom rescue Pam from the burning building? How will he do it? What did the robber steal from the safety deposit box that the Mafia wants so much?

The questions can be minor questions which can be answered in a few pages-- Will Pam say yes when Tom asks her out?

The questions can be major questions that take the whole book to answer-- Who killed Bill and why?

Writing interlocking questions is a complicated dance between the writer and the reader. The writer wants to give just enough information to involve the reader and urge her forward in the narrative, but not so much information that the reader becomes bored.

The reader sees the questions and their answers as clues and reading the story is a mystery she wants to solve for herself. The reader not only wants to know what happens next, she also wants to make guesses at what will happen next and why.

To see the power of interlocking questions, just consider the Harry Potter series. These books were not only good individual reads full of interlocking questions, the interlocking questions extended through the series. People talked about these questions, they puzzled over these questions, and they argued over these questions as each book came out.

If JK Rowling had explained everything early on, the series would not have been so popular, and the readers would not have been so invested in the characters.

How do you write interlocking questions?

One trick is to think of yourself as the reader. What will the reader want to know at that moment in the narrative? What questions can you answer and what answers can be held back?

When you are plotting your story out, you will be thinking about the who, what, when, where, and why of each event. Decide what information from the Five W's the reader needs immediately, and what information can be seeded through the narrative as questions and answers.

Every answer you give to an important narrative question should lead to more questions-- Jim couldn't possibly have killed Bill, but why has he confessed to the murder? Could he be protecting someone else? Who and why?

A good way to see how interlocking questions work is to study how a good author uses them.

Pick a favorite author who really sucks you into their books and keeps you flipping the pages. Go to the author's website and find the sample chapter or chapters of one of their books. Print those pages, get the highlighter out, and mark every narrative question you find. Notice how the small questions and the larger questions work together.

Or you can pull out a favorite book from your keeper shelf and read it while paying attention to the interlocking questions.

During all this, remember that the writer and the reader have one important question foremost in their heads as they write and read-- What happens next?

Monday, September 12, 2011

Anyone who has had a bad review knows how traumatic is it, but reviewers don’t know everything. Here are what some reviewers have said in the past.

"Sentimental rubbish... Show me one page that contains an idea"-- Odessa Courier on Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877.

"Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down"-- Lord Byron, 1814.

"His fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink" -- Wm. Winstanley, 1687 on Milton.

"Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer" -- La Figaro, 1857.

"This is a book of the season only"-- NY Herald Tribune on The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation... our children will wonder what their ancestors could have meant by putting Dickens at the head of the novelists of today."-- Saturday Review, 1858.

"Nothing odd will do long. Tristam Shandy did not last" -- Samuel Johnson in 1776 on a novel that is still in print over 200 years later.

"The only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read" --J. Lorimer reviewing Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1847.

For a contemporary view, go to Amazon and read some of the reviews of your favorite authors.

Subscribe

Search This Blog

Marilynn's Books

My Yahoogroups

Subscribe to ByerlyWriting

Marilynn Byerly’s writing passion is adventure stories in the past, present, and future. In her creations of adventurers, suspense, true love, and villains to vanquish, she also likes to add a dash of the unexpected.

"Affaire de Coeur" named her an outstanding achiever in romance, and her novels have won numerous awards including a Sapphire, the National Reader's Choice Award, and the Write Touch Award.

TEACHER

Marilynn has taught writing, judged numerous national and regional writing contests, reviewed books, and written articles on writing which have appeared in trade publications, national magazines, and writing websites.